Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

American Split-Screen Night

As cops
close in on the fiery last stand of a mass murderer, a continent away Barack
Obama tries to smoke out those who have been holding America hostage with
lethal ideology.

The Christopher
Dorner story may be over, but the President’s State of the Union assault on Tea
Party barricades is just the start of a long siege.

For
over an hour last night he fired off a fusillade of rational proposals to raise
the minimum wage, reform immigration, expand education and otherwise invest in
the economy, but he will have to take the battle with Congress to the streets.

As
polls show even more Americans than those who reelected Obama solidly behind
him, the President will have to keep campaigning across the country in coming
months to pressure GOP incumbents into action between now and 2014.

Marco
Rubio’s lame response underscores their rote resistance. Looking like a sweaty
Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News,” the party’s New Hope offers nothing but
bromides against big government and the news that he has just finished paying
off his student loans.

All
this was to be expected, but the highlight of the night was Barack Obama’s
impassioned peroration on legislation for gun control.

To an
audience including families of victims, he pointed to the parents of 15-year-old
Hadiya Pendleton, who attended his inauguration and was killed “a mile away from
my house” in Chicago a week later:

“Hadiya’s
parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two
dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve
a vote.

“Gabby
Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families
of Aurora deserve a vote.

“The
families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other
communities ripped open by gun violence--they deserve a simple vote.

“Our
actions will not prevent every senseless act of violence in this country. Indeed,
no laws, no initiatives, no administrative acts will perfectly solve all the
challenges I’ve outlined tonight. But we were never sent here to be perfect. We
were sent here to make what difference we can, to secure this nation, expand
opportunity, and uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but
absolutely necessary work of self-government.”

John
Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and their minions were there to hear
those words, but will their constituents persuade them to act on them?